NAACP launches coalition watchdog site to ‘monitor’ Tea Party ‘racists’

Matthew Boyle
The Daily Caller
9/2/2010

NAACP President & CEO Ben Jealous and Beck rally attendees

The NAACP partnered with Media Matters, Think Progress and New Left Media to launch teapartytracker.org, a website that will specifically publish and monitor “racism and other forms of extremism within the Tea Party movement.”

Media Matters and Think Progress representatives said their content and reporting haven’t changed and that the NAACP approached their organizations seeking only to republish select content they’ve produced. The NAACP’s new teapartytracker.org is aimed specifically at highlighting “racism” in the Tea Party.

New Left Media, the duo of Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll who use a “Trojan trick” to get interviews with Tea Partiers, is also a partner organization on the new site.

As for what Media Matters, New Left Media, Think Progress and the NAACP plan to do with teapartytracker.org, Think Progress editor Faiz Shakir and Media Matters Vice President for Research and Communications Ari Rabin-Havt said the NAACP contacted them about sharing content related to the Tea Party.

Shakir said the website isn’t meant to attack the Tea Party, only to “hold it accountable.”

“When they display intolerance and the kinds of racial signs that we’ve seen and the kinds of angry rhetoric, there’s nobody pushing back on that rhetoric or to check the record or fact-check it,” Shakir said. “I think it [the website] should be viewed in light of the NAACP being opposed to the intolerant elements of the Tea Party.”

Conservative media guru Andrew Breitbart, who was once a victim of New Left Media’s trickery (though he says he doesn’t object to that type of journalism), said Think Progress and Media Matters shouldn’t, by any means, partner with an advocacy group, especially the NAACP, in trying to the paint the Tea Party a certain color.

“It’s called projection,” Breitbart said. “The alliance of the left, the Think Progress, the Media Matters and the NAACP are projecting onto the Tea Party. The accusations are a projection of who the coordinated, well-funded left is. They are manufacturing the racism. They are the ones who are fomenting the violence, the ones who are the only perpetrators of violence over the last year.”

Shakir thinks his organization, though, unlike the NAACP, has held itself to higher journalistic standards. He said Think Progress is a group of “advocacy journalists,” but that his staff values fact-checking and reporting truth…

Read the rest at The Daily Caller.

Update: iOwnTheWorld writes, “…So after calling the Tea Parties, Conservatives, White People and their dogs racists for the last year or two, NOW they are going to look for the proof.

“What JACKASSES!

“And I’m sure lefties won’t be sending in videos of their butt buddies dressed as Nazis parading around TEA Parties. (Rolling eyes.)

“The site is as useless as the people who created it. Who is this appealing to? Do they think there is someone out there that is going to see their stupid site and say, ‘wow, that guy IS a racist in that picture at that rally. I guess I DO WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO TAKE OVER MY ENTIRE LIFE AFTER ALL.’ ”

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